Breaking News Category

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service Who provides Denny Hamlin his most formidable competition at Martinsville? No, it’s not Jimmie Johnson, who has won eight times at the fabled short track. And it’s not Joey Logano, who has won the last three poles at Martinsville. Denny Hamlin’s stiffest competition at the .526-mile speedway is Denny Hamlin, because, all too often, the driver of the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota has beaten himself. “I don’t know how many pit road penalties I’ve had here at this race track, or whyRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service MARTINSVILLE, Va. – If there’s anyone who should know just how much racing at Martinsville has changed over the years, the man with all the answers is the King. The unparalleled master of short track racing in NASCAR’s premier series, Richard Petty accumulated the most wins (15), most top fives (30) and most top 10s (37) at the .526-mile speedway. But in Petty’s day, success at Martinsville — site of Sunday’s STP 500 (1 p.m. ET on FS1) — was as much about runningRead More

By Adam Tate, Managing Editor 1:29.493, the lap Lewis Hamilton put in to claim pole position today at Bahrain’s Sakhir circuit to beat team mate Nico Rosberg is the fastest lap ever recorded here. Faster than the mighty V10 era cars, faster than the V8’s, faster than Mark Webber’s 2005 lap record of 1:29.527 set in a Williams with a roaring V10. Hamilton was thrilled with the time and called it “sexy.” F1 might not have to change as much as they thought for 2017 to make the cars faster thanRead More

Sebastian Vettel set the fastest time of final practice in Bahrain ahead of team-mate Kimi Raikkonen as Ferrari took the fight to Mercedes ahead of qualifying at the Sakhir Circuit. With just over 10 minutes left on the clock, the Mercedes drivers took to the track on the red-banded supersoft tyre for their qualifying runs. Nico Rosberg immediately jumped to P1 with a lap of 1:32.104, with Lewis Hamilton quickly slotting into P2 with a lap just five hundredths of a second adrift of the Australian Grand Prix winner. ItRead More

AVONDALE, Ariz. – Kyle Kaiser didn’t turn the fastest lap during this afternoon’s qualifying session on the 1.022-mile Phoenix International Raceway oval – that honor fell to Brazilian Andre Negrao – but a blend of impressive pace and admirable consistency over his two-lap run was enough for the Californian teenager to claim the pole position for tomorrow’s Indy Lights Grand Prix of Phoenix. The pole was Kaiser’s second in three races for Juncos Racing, coming on the heels of his first career Indy Lights Presented by Cooper Tires pole onRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service MARTINSVILLE, Va. – The third time was the charm for Joey Logano. Then again, so were the first and second. The driver of the No. 22 Team Penske Ford dominated qualifying for Sunday’s STP 500 (1 p.m. ET on FS1), topping the speed chart in all three sessions of Friday’s knockout qualifying at Martinsville Speedway. The Coors Light Pole Award was the third straight for Logano at the .526-mile paper-clip-shaped short track, marking the first time a driver has won three consecutive poles atRead More

By Adam Tate, Managing Editor Fernando Alonso has not been cleared to race at the Bahrain Grand Prix this weekend. The two-time champ has been sidelined by FIA doctors after the scary crash he had with Haas F1’s Esteban Gutierrez in the season opening Australian Grand Prix. The announcement does not come as a shock as Alonso withstood over 40G’s in one of the most violent crashes in recent memory. Alonso has further revealed that he has a broken rib and a lung issue called a pneumothorax, where air gets trappedRead More

By NASCAR Wire Service At the beginning of 2015, Ben Rhodes’ NASCAR future looked as bright as any other of the sport’s young prospects. The then 18-year-old Louisville, Kentucky native, fresh off a dominant run to the 2014 NASCAR K&N Pro Series East championship that included five wins and 11 top fives in 16 races, inked a deal with stalwart JR Motorsports to compete in 10 NASCAR XFINITY Series races. With the talent he showed in the NKNPSE and the power of the JRM cars, Rhodes was expected to succeedRead More

By NASCAR Wire Service Chase Elliott would probably like to forget his first career NASCAR Sprint Cup Series start. Debuting in the 2015 STP 500 at Martinsville Speedway with much fanfare, Elliott was forced to take his No. 25 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet to the garage on the 74th go-around of the 500-lap race after sustaining heavy damage from two separate wrecks. His crew feverishly worked to get him back out on the track where he battled his way to a 38th-place finish. “This is a different ball-game,” Elliott said afterRead More

By Adam Tate, Managing Editor Despite their incredibly successful start to the season, Haas F1 Team plans to end development of the VF-16 sooner rather than later and switch their focus to the 2017 car. After becoming the first team to score points on debut since Toyota, Gene Haas is eager to allocate most of the new outfits resources into preparing for next season’s massive regulation changes which aim to bring faster cars, wider tires and the halo device. Other than some updates we have been working on, we are pretty much done withRead More